Monday 28 October 2013

High-performance Signal and Data Processing Workshop

We are very happy to announce the workshop High-performance Signal and Data Processing 2014. The workshop aims to bring together key people to discuss grand challenges facing the signal processing community in Radio Astronomy, Gamma Ray Astronomy and Particle Physics, and to provide knowledge sharing to delegates in both a lecture format, as well as a classroom environment for hands-on hardware and software training. General overviews and in-depth presentations will be given.

The event will take place at the Wits Professional Development HUB at the University of the Witwatersrand, the week of January 27th to January 31st 2014. We are honored to have the following keynote speakers at the event:
Dr. Daniel Adams, Chief Director: Emerging Research Areas and Infrastructure at the DST
Prof. Jean Cleymans, Chairman of SA-CERN
Dr. Bernard Fanaroff, SKA Project Director
Dr. Peter Jenni, former Spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at CERN
Prof. Justin Jonas, MeerKAT Associate Director of Science and Engineering
Prof. Naba Mondal, Spokesperson of the India-based Neutrino Observatory

Keynote addresses will be followed by plenary sessions for in-depth presentations by experts in areas of physics and engineering. Students and young researches are also welcome to deliver presentations. Several hands-on sessions with FPGA-based boards, RHINO and ROACH, will be provided. A session on Grid software is also envisioned.
The registration and abstract submission are now open till December 31st 2013. It is envisioned to publish a book of proceedings. Proceedings will be peer reviewed. The deadline for proceedings submission is February 15th 2014. Students and young researchers are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts and proceedings.

There are funding opportunities for students outside the Johannesburg area. Preference will be given to South African students.

Visit the site at: http://www.hpspsa.com/ to get more information.

The flyer can be found here.


Wednesday 9 October 2013

Nobel Prize

The Physics department held a celebratory cake and tea at the news of the Nobel Prize being awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert.

Wits has a large presence at ATLAS, one of the two general purpose detectors, responsible for the discovery of the Higgs boson.

Well done to Bruce, Trevor and Oana together with their postdocs and PG students!